Linux with a streaming client. Not exactly the second coming of Jesus like all of the valve fanboys are going on about. I'm sure this is doable with a customized Squeezebox or w/e client, doesn't need a whole new operating system.

SteamOS is meant for a living room experience as in, it's competing with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, this is not meant to replace Windows (or Steam on Windows anyway) this OS is a pure gaming OS it has 0 productivity, 0 media services and 0 drivers that are optimized for what is yet another Linux distribution, unless you only game, this is the worst kind of Linux there is.

isn't there allot of games that are decent that use the unreal engine that right perfectly in linux, I know that the old return to castle wolfienstin and Enemy territory and unreal games all of them ran allot better in linux then windows

I think Valve is moving toward a Linux based gaming OS that doesn't require streaming. This is merely the first step in that quest. The problem is that the games in their library are mostly DX based. As others pointed out, Valve would need to license DX even if they try to get it to work on Linux and I doubt MS would entertain that.

SteamOS has a lot of hurdles to jump, primarily dev support. This is the chicken and the egg problem that every new platform faces: to get the games, you need the users. to get the users, you need the games.

It's unrealistic to expect them to achieve console-level optimization/performance on like hardware. It is also unrealistic to expect them to sell like-hardware for less.

So there's no way Steam intends to contend with mainstream consoles in the near future. But as those consoles grow long in the tooth and support for SteamOS gradually improves, it may be a disruptor in a few years.

Where it may be immediately competitive is on low-end hardware. With Dev support, a sub-$200 SteamOS machine will play a ton of very good, *cheap*, PC quality, 360-era and indie games. Indie devs tend to be more agile and hungry, so we'll probably see immediate enthusiasm from that sector.

I don't see SteamOS as competition to existing consoles. It's actually a win win for everyone. It lowers the bar for people that want to get into PC gaming and it sets some hardware standards that developers will be targeting.

Most folks on here are probably well ahead of the curve already, but gaming will improve because of it. It's going to allow developers to only have to test a handful of GPUs.